


life plus 99 years

by Alias (anafabula)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Peter Lukas, Banned Together Bingo 2020, Brain Damage, Emotional Manipulation, Gentle Kissing, Hair-petting, In a way it’s still fix-it fic compared to canon, M/M, Non-Consensual Cuddling, Non-Consensual Touching, Off-label use of a kinkmeme prompt, Possessive Behavior, Post-MAG159 The Last, Trauma, sensory processing issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 06:21:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24466387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anafabula/pseuds/Alias
Summary: So very much of Peter Lukas was his god, and rightly so. But in its absence what remains doesn’t know how to be empty, how to be the hollow thing that’s left. The Archivist made sure enough of that.It’s nice, Elias is finding, just to have him after all.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas
Comments: 14
Kudos: 76
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020, Rusty Kink





	life plus 99 years

**Author's Note:**

> Fic named for [this song of the same title](https://genius.com/Stephen-dolginoff-life-plus-99-years-finale-lyrics). This is a fill for my Gentle Giant BTB card, featuring: taking “Too Much Kissing” _very very literally_.
> 
> I do hope someone fills this prompt in a… more traditionally kinkmeme-appropriate way as well. (Or that I can inspire them to do so? I’m down.) [It’s such a good prompt!](https://rusty-kink.dreamwidth.org/1380.html?thread=165988#cmt165988)

This is hardly the first time Elias has seen him like this, though very few of those cases were in person. He’d Watched when Peter overextended himself going among mortals, both for curiosity’s sake and for the sensible purpose of knowing the vulnerabilities of something that could easily be his enemy tomorrow. (Sometimes, yes, even out of simple concern.)

Seeing such upset sustained and up close is altogether different, and if Elias is going to grow used to it he surely hasn’t yet. It’s surprising, in fact, if only slightly, how— little Peter can stand of existing in the world when any other option is denied to him. This is so little, in the grander scheme of things, the way he can hardly bear sitting in silence with Elias’s hand in his hair.

He’s being gentle — has been, this whole time, assiduously so. Peter used to enjoy gentle touch, Elias muses, though of course he couldn’t bring himself to admit it, would never opt in if given another option. It made it a sort of special occasion for Elias to deny him teeth and enmity after all, made him interested in doing so. He could See inside him how differently Peter lit up; when kissed, for example, confused and indignant and refusing to back down if Elias opted for one of his studiously rare wins to net him a single press of his closed mouth against Peter’s own and nothing further. Watched with interest every time, the way he found it almost uniquely overwhelming, too warm, too bright, too much. It really didn’t get old.

But, of course, Peter used to know what to do about it. Less so now. Now — an additional object of Elias’s fascination, this — he can only _almost_ remember what he’d want, and how it would feel to want it.

So very much of Peter Lukas was his god, and rightly so. But in its absence what remains doesn’t know how to be empty, how to be the hollow thing that’s left. The Archivist made sure enough of that. Elias is terribly proud of him. Now that all that remains is to wait, he has as much time as he would like, really, to remap the contours of his relationship with his sometime husband.

Peter sighs, shudders, leans his head against Elias’s knee. He does not ask for him to still his hand.

He does not, in fact, even entirely want him to; a life without much to pass for human contact (and most of a long one by human standards, as well, if not really by Elias’s) has left him a lot to catch up on, the void of being fully alone with himself and his markedly disorganized thoughts getting no less painful with what should be acclimation. If Elias were to let him alone, the clean, scouring cold of Forsaken that Peter half-understands once having loved above and in place of all else would not come back to him. He just _gets lonely_. And, on a simple existential level, he doesn’t know how to be.

Elias has found quickly enough that he likes his husband like this. He’s liked him well enough many other ways as well, but that’s now immaterial. He likes being able to run his fingers through Peter’s hair for longer than a few seconds, without the old built-in deadline of stopping when his nervous system screams and he pulls away, even with what it does to his breathing. It’s nice hair, really, a good texture, thick and easy to grasp and pleasant to touch gently. Elias rarely got to do that sort of thing before.

Novelty blends seamlessly into custom here, unsurprisingly. He hasn’t gotten tired of it, it’s… pleasant. Peter’s presence is as reliable as his absence once was, and more enjoyable to interact with. He’s just so ill-equipped to take in the rest of the world, the idea of buildings with other people in them, touch as a regular thing and not a rare occasion, the active and pressing knowledge of being watched. He used to run warm and he doesn’t anymore, to Elias’s more than vague interest, body heat leaching off on anything he touches in the most normal way in the world; when he misses his god, he feels the cold of it.

Elias is relatively certain that even with all his faculties about him Peter would be hard-pressed to choose between the options he has left; just as well he doesn’t have to, really.

And there’s nothing new at this point for Elias in the shape of his mouth, save for the slight exhilaration of proving he gets to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him again, as much as he pleases, even though what pleases him is just the warm, giving press of lips on lips, like his hands on Peter’s hands, like his fingers in his hair now.

It’s not even that it hurts him so much as that there is a superset of sensation which pain belongs to and which Peter largely can’t distinguish, the way light touch sets his nerves to screaming and nothing, _nothing_ makes it stop.

There are presumably still ways to manage that, Elias expects. There generally are. Maybe later, when he wants variety more than he wants to be able to bracket Peter’s face with his hands and brush his lips against his lips and have Peter let him. Maybe once the world has changed, he thinks; if anything’s likely to reset the rules they play by again, presumably that will be it. (And if he’s only been guaranteed another week or so of him like this, isn’t that all the more reason to take advantage of it?)

After all, Peter does get his wits about him enough to be disagreeable sometimes already. No pattern in it that Elias can see, and he’s surprised at how little he minds it. Peter’s confused irritation to find himself in this universe, and not his own, worse and greater when he realizes that he has an audience. Half the time Elias has to jump-start the memory for him that he’s reaching for a god whose nature is more suited to abandoning him than not in the first place.

And a hand on his wrist, on the back of his neck, dry, familiar, still slightly cooler than even human skin. The contrast of how touch calms his mind and spikes his heartbeat.

Elias doesn’t think he’s done being fascinated by it yet, not at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments reliably make my day, should you be amenable!


End file.
